Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

Moore, not less

(Warning: story discussed in close and explicit detail)

There's no two ways about it--the opening credits to Zack Snyder's Watchmen is impressive as hell, evoking as it does both the stillness of comic books and the solidity and depth of the film frame; for about two or three minutes a perfect fusion of both mediums is achieved.

Then the rest of the movie starts. The picture is two hours and forty-two minutes long, which I think is roughly a hundred and sixty minutes too long. It's an overproduced, ploddingly literal yet at the same time flagrantly unfaithful adaptation of Moore's comic book.

Most of the plot points and main characters are here. Richard Nixon and John Kennedy put in an appearance; so do airships and electric cars. The Tales of the Black Freighter comic book and the friendship between the two Nite Owls are gone, and I can see how they needed to be set aside, to reduce the running time (that said, Owl's reaction to his mentor's fate summarizes in a single scene the core of vigilante psychology--and how this kind of thinking will subtly if inevitably lead to abuse).

But if Snyder knows the words to Moore's masterwork, he seems to have missed the melody--nuances have been lost, entire concepts turned upside-down, or simplified to an appalling degree. The '80s United States shown here is more stylized than accurately captured--yes, this is supposed to be an alternate reality, but a recognizable alternate reality. To emphasize dark seductiveness (glossy clothes, bright metal, smooth stonework, yard after yard of sheet glass) over a familiar and recent time period is to throw that aspect of Moore's work out of whack.

Same goes for the fight sequences--instead of quick and dirty scuffles, onscreen they become slow-motion ballets; instead of realistic staging, we have elaborate moves, even some fancy martial-arts choreography. We don't get the sense of ordinary people wearing masks and beating the crap out of each other; we get super-heroes, and Moore's comic wasn't (with only one notable exception) about super-heroes.

Along the way Snyder has jiggered with the characters, not necessarily for the better. Adrian (Ozymandias) in the comic had a more thoughtful, more apparently compassionate presence (he actually looked despondent when Ed Blake (The Comedian) set him straight about the fate of the world); here his chilly visage screams "Masterminding sociopath! Do not trust!" Dan (Nite Owl) and Laurie (Silk Spectre) bloodied noses and perhaps broke a finger or two on paper, but they did not snap limbs, and at no point were they seen using criminals as human shields, to be shot to death. Making Dan and Laurie killers makes no sense--they would in effect be no different from sociopaths like Rorschach, or Ed Blake, and Moore's overall moral scheme would collapse into seething nihilism.

Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach does a decent job as Walter Kovacs--as Rorschach unmasked. When he has his 'true face' on, Rorschach tends to nod with every syllable, as if afraid audiences will think his voice comes from out of the thin air (he looks like a sock puppet nodding at every syllable); Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Edward Blake chews scenery with scraggly gusto, but fails to get at the humanity Moore suggests can be found at the bottom. Malin Akerman as Laurie defines woodenness--she only looks good when compared to Carla Gugino as Laurie's mom, Sally Juspeczyk, who seems both stiff and annoying at the same time.

I usually don't look to the performances to either sink or redeem a movie nowadays, but the characters Moore drew are so rich and meaty it's a shame not to take advantage of what he had accomplished. I think it's a measure of how misguided this movie is that the comic's emotional climax, the confrontation between Sally and Laurie over Sally's past, goes over like a collapsing Vegas hotel--two undoubtedly pretty but talentless actresses, mouthing lines too emotionally complex for them to comprehend, much less deliver with the proper nuance and subtlety.

Of course we knew where Snyder's priorities were much earlier. The crucial debate between Jon and Laurie on Mars about the importance of saving the Earth, which comically keeps turning into a therapy session on Laurie's messed-up life is turned onscreen into some kind of Vulcan mind meld, with Jon sucking the images out of Laurie's head--presumably to save on running time, so Snyder can have Laurie and Dan cross a prison hallway in glorious slow motion, bashing criminals right and left (a sequence Moore and Gibbons pretty much disposed of in a few panels on paper).

Tellingly the film's most successful character is its least human. As Jon Osterman, Billy Crudup manages to suggest the otherworldliness of a man literally above humankind's relatively petty concerns--but you have to figure Snyder would score with him. His thinking is alien, hence no interpretation artistic or otherwise is needed to make him fascinating. He's mainly a super-powered plot function, meant to get the narrative going and solve certain story structure problems.

Finally, there's the story structure. I'm actually not a big fan of Alan Moore's Watchmen; I think the text supplements that follow eleven of the twelve issues are largely unreadable (there are exceptions--Sally Jupiter's clippings and Ozymandias' (Adrian's) interview are minor character-sketch masterpieces), the basic plot too absurd and unwieldy to take seriously (it figures that a masked hero would think of saving the world that way). Moore's best work is possibly From Hell, his epic meditation on Jack the Ripper and 19th century England (with breathtaking art from Eddie Campbell--rare case where the artist's work fully matches the beauty and subtlety of the writer's prose).

But Moore's comic is an impressive achievement mainly for its intricate plot, divided into twelve segments. Snyder has to dispose of the twelve-chapter structure, certainly, but doesn't replace it with anything that would at least suggest the source material's level of complexity. Snyder could have picked from Moore and Gibbon's staggeringly extensive library of symbols and repeated motifs to construct some kind of visual parallel and commentary on the story (on those terms alone Moore and Gibbons' work stands above Snyder's).

Take the motif of sphere and spatter. We first see it on Ed's smiley button, the blood splat an affront to the button's yellow smoothness. We see that bubble motif repeated again and again, in various forms, for every main character--Laurie (the perfume bottle/snow dome); Dan (his dusty goggles, the Owl Ship's windshields); Adrian (his domed tropical garden). Even Sally has her own bubble, of sorts (Moloch's solar mirror weapon).

I think Moore's treatment of the bubble motif in Laurie's story gives us an idea of what the recurring image means--a memory, in effect, an encapsulated emotion or idea (or illusion, if you will), waiting to be burst. In Laurie's case it's the memory of her childhood, relatively happy if fatherless (when she learns who her father really is, the perfume bottle/snow dome shatters). The goggles/windshield represent Dan's memories of his adventures as Nite Owl, safely put away under a layer of dust and nostalgia (Laurie's finger--and later, hand--disturb that layer of dust). Adrian's dome represents the extent of his scientific powers (a tropical paradise in Antarctica); a random gap in the surrounding snowdrift reveals the life living beneath that dome. When Adrian opens the dome, he's bursting his own bubble, his own created empire, to make way for a new world.

Later a triumphant Adrian faces an orrery, representing his New World (Solar System?) Order. Jon stands half-inside, half-outside the large sphere; he vanishes, leaving blue smoke and the fateful words "nothing ever ends," the mist of his vanishing filling sphere and surrounding air--implying, perhaps, that life (random chaos, willful action) persists in marring celestial perfection. That forces are at play that even now will bring down Adrian's masterwork.

Each time we see a bubble, a glass dome, a lens, a smiley face, some portion of encapsulated space or air (or innocence) is variously burst, or opened, or smeared, or stained with blood, or violated in some way. Each tries to keep his or her memories/ emotions/illusions pure and intact, but everything from epiphany to murder keeps intruding and time, however delayed or suspended, flows once again.

Even Jon has his illusion, in this case an entire world. While Laurie talks to him of the urgency of the situation and primacy of human life, Jon drones on and on about the red planet (I personally found his little lectures on the grandeur of Mar's landscape fascinating). It takes Laurie's own example to remind him of an even greater wonder, the infinite variety and unlikeliness of human life--when Jon's crystal palace crumbles, it isn't just Laurie's illusions collapsing, but Jon's as well.

Ed's smiley button is an interesting case--a crucial one, I think. It's basically the face Ed presents to the world as The Comedian--a face that, knowing Ed's personality, relentlessly responds to the world's madness and despair with the same bright, cynical smile. When confronted by a massive but workable plan to save the world from that madness and despair, Ed's practiced cynicism cracks, the crack represented by the bloodstain on his smiley button. The comic's final image is that of Ed's smiley face making its final bow, tying its marred circular image with Adrian's foggy orrery, and reminding us of the failure of Ed's cynicism. Of the impossibility of any kind of certainty ("nothing ever ends") with regards to anything and everything that has happened before. The only certainty is change and flow.

Significantly, the one major character without a sphere or bubble or illusion to burst is Rorschach. Faced with ultimate answers to imponderable questions, he doesn't hesitate; he knows what to do and does it. "What would you call that, I wonder," Adrian muses. "'Blotting out reality,' perhaps?" Rorschach's view of the world is dark enough and flexible enough to take the secret master plan in stride; you might also say his insanity--which I'm guessing in Moore's mind reflects the world's insanity--is bigger than any mere plot to kill millions of people.

Cute theory, no? It's something you can piece together little by little, gazing down on a copy of Watchmen; I'm not sure you can do the same with the movie (for one Snyder doesn't bother to re-create Adrian's domed garden, or the snow-spatter on the dome's surface that ties it to the blood spatter on Ed's smiley-face button).

Maybe the saddest aspect to all this are the fanboys saying "I don't want to read the book, it might spoil me for the movie." "What?" I want to exclaim. "You have it all backwards. The movie will spoil the book for you; the movie is nothing compared to the book." The movie is a poor substitute for Moore and Gibbon's comic, maybe not the greatest ever made, but certainly one of the more intelligent ones, towering high over Snyder's multimillion dollar stumble. I urge anyone who hasn't read or seen either and is planning to do both (or just one of the two) to go for Moore, not less.

They Wait (Ernie Barbarash, 2007)

Make no bones about it

Is Canada such a wasteland when it comes to horror? There's Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), which preceded John Carpenter's better-known (though not necessarily superior) Halloween by about four years. There are the endless slasher imitations that followed Clark's cult classic, including the Prom Night movies and J. Lee Thompson's Happy Birthday to Me (1981)--no fine example of the genre, the picture does include one memorable scene, of guests attending a girl's birthday party sporting the various weapons with which they were murdered. There's David Cronenberg in a category all his own, with examples of everything from gynecological horror (Shivers (1975); Rabid (1977); Dead Ringers (1988)) to cerebral (Videodrome (1983)--arguably his masterpiece; eXistenZ (1999)) to the everyday, kitchen-sink variety (Spider (2002); A History of Violence (2005); Eastern Promises (2007)). Then there's Guy Madden's Dracula: Pages from A Virgin's Diary (2002)--far too beautiful to be considered straight horror, plus Mark Holcomb in a Senses of Cinema article has suggested that the imagery may have been inspired by Gerardo de Leon's Kulay Dugo ang Gabi (Blood is the Color of Night, 1964).

So I ask again: is Canada such a wasteland for horror? Is it possible that underneath the façade of breathtakingly beautiful natural landscapes all one will find is more breathtakingly beautiful natural landscapes? I wouldn't know; I'd be glad to learn that I'm totally wrong.

That said, Ernie Barbarash's They Wait (2007) is perhaps not the movie that'll change my mind. Basically an "abducted child" thriller, the movie may ground itself firmly in Chinese mythology, particularly those involving the "hungry ghost" month--the seventh month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar--but the thrills are mostly borrowed from Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) by way of Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on (2003), with a fistful of Nakata's Dark Water (2000) thrown into the bargain.

Kudos to the filmmakers for actually taking the pains to foreground Chinese folklore in this--not only ghosts but illegal immigrants, sweatshops, burial practices, especially with regards to bones (one character is actually referred to as a "bone collector," or someone who encases the decease's bones in a box, for later delivery back to the homeland). And not just cultural but visual details--the look of the bone box, the intricately tabletop illustration of a human skeleton over which the real bones are laid out (presumably a guide as to what belong where, to ensure that all bones are accounted for), the black die coating the child's arm up to his elbows.

That last bit is easily the most unsettling detail in the film, the kind of distinct twist one might find in a supernatural drama steeped in a culture's actual folklore. Sarah (Jaime King) finds her son Sam (Regan Oey) unconscious, his arms somehow dyed black. They are staying with Aunt Mei (Cheng Pei-Pei), whose husband Raymond (Colin Foo) had been killed in the forest by an unknown assailant--in this month of hungry ghosts, spirits are allowed to wander the world of men, tempting them, frightening them, sometimes even possessing their corporeal selves, to carry out unfinished business (presumably Uncle Raymond was involved in some unfinished business that ended badly). In Sam's case, a young woman has taken his soul, and refuses to release it until her mission is complete--what that mission is and how to accomplish it is for the spirit to know, for Sarah to find out (not fair, I know). Various noisy digital effects later, Sarah is injecting herself with a poison to enable her to enter the spirit world, said action causing the medical staff to think she's lost her marbles and strap her to a hospital bed.

If I'm not on my feet applauding--if my affection for the picture is more guarded than enthusiastic, that's because I feel the movie has a split personality. On one hand there's the scrupulously researched and presented supernatural folklore; on the other hand, the ghosts themselves are introduced and presented with the understated subtlety of a bad Hollywood remake, all loud clanging and inane shrieking. It's been a pet theory of mine that half a horror film's actual power comes from the soundtrack, from the timing and amount of noise/alleged music generated when something scary is supposed to be happening--the less generated, the better. The soundtrack of this one feels especially like reheated leftovers from that stupid Ringu remake Gore Verbinski foisted on the general public seven years ago (the sequel, directed by Nakata himself is much better--is in fact quite underrated). If the filmmakers actually took the time and effort to supply the picture with an authentic and unique-looking cultural milieu you'd think they'd adopt a unique-looking (and sounding) audiovisual style to accompany said milieu (here's a hint: less clanking, less shrieking, less overall hysteria would help).

The cast is generally unmemorable, save for Cheng Pei-Pei, best known for her starring role in King Hu's great Da zui xia (Come Drink With Me, 1966), and for being the rare bright spot in Ang Lee's otherwise soporific Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Cheng creates unrealistic expectations, of elegantly shot and edited images, of strong women with tremendous martial arts skills, expectations that are ultimately left unfulfilled by this picture. To be fair, she does get to wield a meat cleaver (albeit as a younger woman, in flashback), and she does meet with a suitably gruesome end. Small blessings in a disappointingly small-minded movie.

First published on Businessworld, 4.3.09

Knowing (Alex Proyas, 2009)

The end of the world as we know it

If you go by what American critics are saying you'd think Alex Proyas' Knowing (2009) was a cheesy, preposterous, overwrought, overserious movie about the end of the world, and you'd be right. Consider the story: young Lucinda (Lara Robinson) fills a sheet of paper with numbers; fifty years said paper is discovered by astrophysicist John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) who realizes that some of the numbers represent the date of every natural calamity of the past fifty years--and that three of the dates occur some time in the future.

Who gave Lucinda the numbers? If they're the dates of foreseen disasters, why bury them--why not publicize them, make use of them somehow, save a few lives? If burying them is meant to give the numbers credibility, what's the point if they convince only a few people, Koestler and whoever he manages to persuade (not many since he hasn't much time)? Why go through all the fuss, when the objective of whoever gave Lucinda those numbers seems (after all is said and done) ridiculously simple, compared to the elaborate means involved (couldn't, say, some kind of specially tuned alert have worked as well?)?

The movie styles itself as some kind of apocalyptic mystery where the sinister scribblings have the significance of a Da Vinci Code, plus the urgency of a thermonuclear device on final countdown. Then there are the scores of silent, blond-haired figures wearing cool black jackets who dog Koestler as he runs about, trying to prevent the last three disasters.

Most of the critics' complaints revolve round the movie's climax, which they've seen before in other, better movies (if I actually mention the titles I'd give the whole thing away). That's the basic problem with mysteries, their revelations ultimately disappoint; that's why Alfred Hitchcock put so little faith in them--he preferred to give the audience as much information as possible early on, then left them to squirm while his characters wandered helplessly into danger.

Not every critic has given a thumbs-down; Roger 'all thumbs' Ebert gave the picture his glowing seal of approval, calling it "among the best science-fiction films I've seen," and granted it four stars. More interesting is his blog post on the film (warning: plot discussed in extremely close and explicit detail)), which is nothing more and nothing less than a religious/metaphysical meditation on the nature of the universe. Is fate random (which is what Koestler--who lost his wife in a hotel fire--believes) or predestined (which is what the film, with its apparently omniscient numbers-cruncher, implies)? The piece contains a few factual howlers (his statement "free will is a necessary component of all spiritual belief systems," for example, handily ignores the existence of Calvinists and Jansenists, among other belief systems) but does have one perceptive observation--this is basically an End of Days movie in science-fiction trappings, a religious fantasy made palatable by cool special effects, a major Hollywood star, and an almost complete absence of gratuitous Bible-thumping (well, maybe a little towards the end, where I'd say it's largely justified).

Actually, Ebert's elaborate essay on free will versus determinism is largely beside the point; the movie's appeal doesn't lie in metaphysics or philosophy, but fantasy. The film's ominous tone, shading darker and darker as it progresses towards utter hopelessness, perfectly matches the mood of today's audiences (I know, I know; movies start development years beforehand, and often do not intentionally reflect the times in which they were released…but nothing is written in stone against a coincidental reflection, one that helps explain the picture's strong boxoffice showing). The apocalypse we face in real life is less literal than economical, but that doesn't make our emotions any less ugly, our hopes any less unlikely. To watch this picture is to actually escape into a comforting fantasy, where money troubles and the threat of unemployment and all the stress of modern life are reduced to a set of numbers, and it's all a matter of interpreting them correctly (there isn't even a lot of math involved, which is slightly disappointing--in episodes of the latest Doctor Who they would at least throw in a happy prime or two). The picture indulges the death wish in all of us--cleanse the world and start all over again.

That's the general audience; personally speaking, if one must watch a dark mystery with some kind of apocalyptic scenario, it helps to have Proyas at the helm. He knows how to evoke shadows--some of the darkness in this picture feels almost palpable, like an endless supply of black felt. He knows how to wring menace out of a beam of light, or a vague figure standing alone in the forest. He knows the value of a tautly stretched moment--your nerves thrum, like guitar strings at the point of snapping. Little of this makes much sense, but Proyas pulls you along in an effortless glide, over every inconsistency and loophole, till you find yourself standing at the brink, surrounded by endless flame. Yes, Proyas knows how to do flame, plenty of it; barbecue enthusiasts may never feel the same way about their coal fires ever again after watching this.

Given how the picture plays so expertly on our anxieties (and boy, do we have major anxieties nowadays) it's a bit disappointing to report that Proyas' vision of human transcendence (here and in most of his previous films) lacks the complexity and scale, the sheer looniness of the classics of the genre. From The Crow (1994) where the hero flees death on the wings of a black fowl to Dark City (1998--his masterpiece, I think), where a city escapes alien captivity to bask in sunlight to I, Robot (2004) where a robot sheds programming to exercise free will to this picture, human (or at least intelligent) life has always sought to burst its mortal or imaginative bonds--but does it always have to be about the next step forward, onwards, upwards? John Boorman's Zardoz (1974) suggests what Darwin always knew, that death is half the engine of evolution (the other half is represented by Sean Connery physically responding to the sight of Charlotte Rampling in skimpy costume--against which reaction I totally understand and sympathize with). Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) suggests that man will do better to fall back on what hearth and home he can find for himself, wherever it may be. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1967) presents a visual enigma (an astronaut in a room/cage, aging rapidly) followed by a man's simultaneous physical regression and spiritual progression. Of Knowing, one wants to say--all that sound and fury, ending with not much to talk about? I don't know, I don't know--it was a nice trip but that finale, I don't know.

First published in Businessworld, 3.27.09

Lancelot du lac (Lancelot of the Lake, Robert Bresson,1974)

(The last of my previously unpublished Bresson articles)

Bresson goes to war

Robert Bresson's Lancelot du lac (Lancelot of the Lake, 1974) comes as something of a shock if you've been watching Bresson's films in chronological order. Not so much the fact that it's in color (it's his third color film), but because the opening sequence shows violence; not just violence, but graphic violence, the lopping off of heads, the spurting of blood in bright arterial red.

Taken (Pierre Morel, 2009)

Fakin'

Pierre Morel's Taken (2008) is an anachronism, a thriller George W. Bush might have enjoyed or--more to the point--something Dick Cheney might have chortled over, reminiscing of better times, if they had remained in power. One can imagine it screening in the White House's private theater, only not for its intended audience: the two little girls sent to bed, the wife close by his side, both set of presidential knuckles tightening over their armrests--not so much in awe of the derring-do depicted onscreen (the action sequences are incoherent and therefore dull) as in wonder at the idiots who can dream up this garbage.

The plot is silly enough--former spy Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) scoops up his collection of forged passports and wads of foreign currency again when his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace, who likes to run around in an irritatingly dorky manner) is kidnapped by white slavers intending to sell her into prostitution (or at least high-end mistressing)--but it's the unquestioned assumptions underpinning the plot that truly offend. I mean--is France really a seething cesspool of sex traffickers, wealthy hedonists (mostly Arab) and corrupt bureaucrats? Are ex-CIA operatives really so noble as to give up their career for the daughter they love? Is time so short and matters really so desperate that torture is the only alternative (and anyway, are the answers produced reliable?)? Are the filmmakers (Morel and his writer-producer Luc Besson) really so intent at earning the all-important American dollar they are willing to slander their own country? Are teenaged American girls really so stupid as to be abducted hours after landing in a foreign country (in which case is one really out of line in feeling she deserved what she got?)?

Mills' CIA-honed mind isn't all tactical brilliance; he stages a one-man raid on a construction site office for no apparent reason (other than to pad the running time past the 90 minute mark) and escapes only through sheer dumb luck. In probably the most controversial scene in the picture he shoots a government official's bystander housewife to obtain much-needed information--maybe it's me, but isn't it possible a man, even a Frenchman, would go ballistic when you shoot his spouse? Wouldn't offering a bottle of Chateau Latour of good vintage be more effective? Way to go for international diplomacy and the righteousness of the American Way, by the way--after all it isn't just Mills' daughter at stake, but her purity as well (Boo! Hiss! European and Middle Eastern degenerates!). The value of a Western Caucasian's hymen has always been high, at least in Hollywood movies.

Mills' torture of the gang boss is cleverly staged--electricity looks clean, just a buzzing noise, flashing lightbulbs, and an actor pretending convulsions; audiences wouldn't be half as comfortable if Mills had uprooted a few fingernails or pulled a tooth or punctured an eyeball. But shoot, he's no barbarian--it's either this or waterboarding, the technique first used by Americans on Filipinos in the Philippine-American War (when it was known as the 'water cure') about a hundred years ago, more recently one of five reportedly approved methods used by the previous administration on Iraqi prisoners during 'enhanced interrogation' sessions.

One watches with a kind of appalled fascination; if Morel were a talent in the same league as, say, Don Seigel (Dirty Harry, 1971), one might announce the American debut of a new fascist film master, able to serve up conservative drivel with an artist's flair; regretfully (I mean this, too) not the case. Morel's setpieces are of the Paul Greengrass school of action moviemaking, with camerawork done as if by an alcoholic and footage cut as if by a John Deere power mower. One can sense that Mills is supposed to be a formidable fighter and crack racing driver, but one can't be quite sure--the action is so chaotically presented it's hard to tell which fist is pummeling whose face where, and why.

All this ludicrousness would be easier to dismiss if it weren't for Neeson. Tall and stooped, with a distinct melancholic air about him (he's both hunchback and belltower in one forlorn figure), Neeson invests Mills with all the humanity the filmmakers apparently lack. He even pulls off the shamelessly sentimental early scenes, of Mills watching from the sidelines as his precious daughter receives a birthday pony from her rich stepfather and Mill's ex-wife (Morel sketches the man's situation with such economical and understated skill one is tempted to call out to him: "forget action, do drama--you've got a real flair"). One can accuse the movie of Neanderthal politics, blatant racism and gratuitous violence, but one can't accuse it of bad acting, at least not the lead actor (and only the actor; the dialogue ("I'll tear down the Eiffel Tower if I have to!") is an entirely different matter). Give me Neeson as the fearlessly questioning Kinsey in Bill Condon's 2004 film of the same name (can an actor be so clueless about the script he's reading?); give me also Neeson in Sam Raimi's Darkman (1990)--every bit as sadistic, but Neeson's character Dr. Peyton Westlake at least openly admits to the monstrousness in him, and Raimi's film has more of a sense of irony about it.

As for Besson--hard to think of any other names left to call him. From modestly talented director (Le Dernier combat (The Last Combat, 1983)) to international hitmaker (Nikita, 1990; Leon, 1994) to Hollywood camp stylist (The Fifth Element (1997), maybe my favorite of all his works) to pretentious hack (The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, 1999) to just plain hack writer (this movie) with distinct reactionary leanings, he's run almost the full course of his downward trajectory.

This could all be a gag, of course, some elaborate effort on the part of Morel and Besson to signify that they're just pulling the legs of the present United States administration instead of sucking up to the previous one (What, were they actually counting on John McCain to win?). I don't know, I don't know--in the movie's distinctly unironic ending (please don't read any further if you for goodness knows what reason still want to watch this atrocity) Morel and Besson has Mills nobly presenting his daughter to her mother and stepfather (yes, she still runs like a dork), safe and sound, not a hair mussed, hymen still intact.

First published at Businessworld, 3.13.09

Mike de Leon's 'Sister Stella L.' 25 Anniversary special screening

In celebration of Sister Stella L.’s 25th anniversary, the UP Film Institute is holding a special screening of the film on March 20, 5 p.m., at the Cine Adarna, UP Diliman.

Dubbed Sister Stella L. @ 25: Tuloy ang Pakikibaka, the activity is organized by the Film 280 class in cooperation with the Vilma Santos Solid International, Inc.

My article for the occasion:

Stella for star

It was 1984, and the mood was angry. Difficult to describe just how angry, but the film was released less than a year after the assassination of Benigno 'Ninoy' Aquino, Jr., after the massive parade bearing his body from Santo Domingo Church down Quezon Avenue. The milling crowds watching Aquino's coffin pass were in a peculiar mood, a mood perhaps not unlike what the Roman centurions might have sensed from the surrounding crowd two millennia ago, while escorting their condemned Jew--veteran soldiers troubled, trembling, knowing how dangerous the moment was. Activists who knew all along, who struggled for years against the Marcos regime, felt vindicated, the same time they felt keenly the loss of one of their more outspoken members; people who wandered through the martial law years under varying degrees of slumber felt shaken, stirred--they never realized how it was, and they were angry. They wanted justice and it was not immediately forthcoming, perhaps never will be.

Caught up in the moment was Regal Films producer "Mother" Lily Monteverde. She had approached filmmaker Mike de Leon for a possible project, any project, as long as she could do the casting. De Leon suggested a Jose "Pete" Lacaba script he had been trying to develop since 1982--about a labor strike and a nun played by famed Filipina actress Vilma Santos. Lured by the prospect of de Leon--arguably the Philippines' most brilliant director--doing a film with Santos, Monteverde greenlighted the project (as to the possible controversy over the film's politics, one wonders if she perhaps didn't think things through, or simply didn't care).

Sister Stella L is arguably the first motion picture from a major Filipino studio to respond to the Aquino assassination. Not directly--the story focuses on Sister Stella Legaspi (Santos), her involvement in a cooking oil factory strike, and her gradual awakening into full political awareness; no mention of Marcos, or of martial law. But the very fact that the film spoke frankly of labor unrest, featured songs and chants with a decidedly socialist slant (it must be remembered that for the longest time Marcos presented himself as the best qualified leader to fight communism in the country), and towards the end suggested that police or military officers might be involved as strikebreakers--those were outright acts of courage. Everyone assumed Marcos' grip on the nation was tight as ever, his ability to silence critics--or worse, make them 'disappear'--as absolute; everyone assumed--and in those early days, they may have been right--that people's lives were in danger, thanks to this film.

But they were in an angry mood, and would not be silenced. You feel it radiating from Pete Lacaba's script--like fever heat--and you feel it in the chanting that on occasion is heard from the soundtrack. Make no mistake, this is a Pete Lacaba film more than it is even a Mike de Leon film; the narrative is linear, the script construction muscular, the dialogue lean and functional. The film resembles other Lacaba-penned films of the period (see Bayan Ko (My Country, 1985), and Orapronobis (Fight for Us, 1989)) more than it resembles other films de Leon has directed (I'd heard that de Leon himself admitted it was his least personal film). If (as I suspect) Lacaba's biggest flaw is an abiding fealty (once quaint, now with the passage of time somehow heroic) to neorealism and straightforward, Hemingwayesque storytelling, it's a flaw one wished would afflict more Filipino scriptwriters; if (as one Filipino filmmaker once told me) Lacaba's fault is that his characters talk far too intelligently, with too much self-awareness, it's a fault too few Filipino characters suffer from nowadays.

I'd mentioned Mike de Leon's direction. The man has one of the strongest if not the strongest and most distinctive visual style in all of Philippine cinema, and subsuming it to the scriptwriter is no small feat--if I find the film at all interesting, it's because of this unusual fact. De Leon's camera serves his story at all times, but the choice of material, the way the story unfolds, the overall tone you sense from one of his pictures--dark if not sardonic, at times both--is so unmistakable it's startling to see the warmer, more earnest emotional palette found in this film (Lacaba's scripts are rarely bathetic or unnecessarily sentimental, but there's a camaraderie found among his characters, particularly those committed to the cause--to his cause--that one finds irresistible). This combination of passionate (but rigorous) intelligence, and the intellectual chill surrounding it, holding it together, giving it form and structure, is a bracing mix--de Leon and Lacaba have not worked together since, so it's possible this may be the only example of such a brew in local films, at least for now.

Of the film's imagery, allow me to cite two--the scene where Sister Stella and Ka Dencio (the inimitable Tony Santos, Sr.) are captured and interrogated most clearly bear de Leon's imprint. Sadism and cruelty are a de Leon specialty, and what makes it so startling isn't so much the physical pain inflicted as the casual, almost cheerful bonhomie of the torturers--it's as if they're playing some adolescent game, and from accounts I've read the attitude of some of the actual people involved isn't too far off. Sister Stella at one point is seated surrounding her interrogators, and her helplessness is palpable--what is it with de Leon and the straight-backed chair that the mere sight of one in his films can inspire so much terror (see also de Leon's Batch '81 (1982) for at least two other memorable occasions)?

The second is the film's finale (please skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the film), which was altered--de Leon had originally added footage of a rally that marched on Epifanio de los Santos (EDSA) Avenue (this was before the People Power revolt that eventually toppled Marcos), footage that would have put Sister Stella's struggles in a nationwide context. The film instead ends with Sister Stella framed against a serene blue sky, speaking. It's a plain speech--easily Lacaba's most characteristic moment--using simple but heartfelt words. Santos to her credit (it's the performance of her career) gives the lines very little histrionics: just the facts, ma'am, no palabok. The film's contemplative end, oddly enough, ties it with a more contemporary socialist filmmaker--Lav Diaz, whose Hesus Rebolusyunaryo (Jesus the Revolutionary, 2002) concludes on a similar note. I'd asked Diaz why such a strange finish, and he said "it's necessary--after a period of action, Hesus has to step back and meditate on his actions. He has to pause and consider the meaning of it all." Sister Stella L. is a clean dive into political consciousness and a clear call to action, at the same time there's a thoughtfulness underneath the picture that lingers in the mind and haunts one's memory.

Au hasard, Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)

(Some old articles I never got around to publishing; a couple of more Bressons in the following weeks)

Gift of a Magi

What's so remarkable about Au hasard, Balthazar is that Bresson uses the simplest things--a donkey; a girl; a camera that tends to look at things askance; some piano music--and with them creates (as Godard puts it) the whole world, or about as beautiful and complex an evocation of that world as anything I've ever seen.

Bresson eschews most special effects, most camera moves, uses only one lens for the entire film (50 mm), doesn't resort to surrealism or trick cutting or even makeup, yet what he creates is as immediate as anything by de Sica or Rosellini, and as strange as anything by Bunuel or Godard. His lead actress hardly twitches a muscle throughout the film, yet you feel you know her inside out; his lead actor--a donkey--has at most a pair of darkly liquid eyes and a head of unkempt fur yet you're moved by his predicament, and ultimate fate.

Bresson throws in the story of a man accused of murder who comes to believe he is guilty (even if he isn't), and it's of a piece, as integrated into the film as if the film had wrapped roots around the man's story and just kept on growing into maturity. From an encounter between an old miller and the film's heroine (insomuch as the film actually has a heroine) Bresson manages to sketch an outline of the girl's father without the man being present, just the miller contrasting the father's philosophy against his own (honor vs. material wealth; pride vs. avarice); with every word he speaks the miller condemns her father's philosophy, then, for good measure, his own. In the end the girl succumbs to the miller, corrupt and decrepit as he is, partly because she must (he's taking her in for the night), partly because it appeals to her sense of perversity, her need for degradation. All this psychologically plausible, the simplest realism, yet somehow poetic, stylized, cinematic.

Bresson believes he's trying for a film where everything "is in its place," and cites the story of Bach reacting to a student admirer, saying what he does is not all that special: he just hits a note at the right time, and the organ does the rest. Bresson claims to be doing the same infuriatingly simple, mysterious act: he points the camera, then glues the resulting footage together. The projector, or so he would like you to think, does the rest.

The classic reading of the film is that the donkey stands for Christ, and all who abuse it are the sinners of the world. Recent critics think otherwise: the village folks' cruelty and vice, the village priest's ineffectuality contradict a strictly Christian interpretation and suggest, among other things, that the donkey is more the victim of an unfeeling materialist world. Bresson immerses us in the textures and sounds--the materials, in effect--of that world, presenting to us through Ghislain Clouquet's crystalline photography the rough weave of the characters' clothes, the crudely hewn rocks that make up their houses; his soundtrack emphasizes specific sounds--clacking cart wheels, clanking chains, Balthazar's defiant, pathetic bray.

If I may throw in my own two centavos (into a pot probably brimming over with currency): Balthazar's behavior in the film is like a base line for all living creatures; the animal acts the way man would act, bereft of human intelligence and given only a basic level of consciousness--move when able, resist when tired, ignore pain when struck, flee when the pain is unbearable. Simple yet, I would say, sane.

The donkey reacts as any animal would react; everyone else reacts differently, self-destructively you might say, because they're cursed with self-conscious intelligence and are capable of doing things against their immediate interest. They are for much of their lives insane, and the film continually compares the donkey's behavior with theirs to sometimes comical, sometimes tragic, effect. The girl sleeps around, her father refuses to compromise, the boy who loves her allows himself to be humiliated, the boy she loves is allowed to humiliate her, the accused man drinks heavily, the miller counts his virtues as covetously as he does his money; through it all Balthazar ambles along, a braying, four-legged condemnation of humanity's perverse craziness. If the donkey dies, that's because the world itself, or the part of it infested by human civilization, has gone mad, and no sane, sensible creature can long survive in it.

August 26, 2007